Kobo Vox caught online ahead of Kindle Fire challenge

Ereader manufacturer Kobo's alternative to the Kindle Fire, the Kobo Vox, has been prematurely revealed, an Android-based tablet expected to retail at under CA$250. Spotted on a hurriedly-yanked product page at Canadian retailer Future Shop (still visible in Google's cache), the 7-inch Vox runs at 1024 x 600 resolution with WiFi b/g/n and will supposedly hit shelves on October 17.

According to the product description - which may well not be final, according to some reports - the Vox will also include Android Market access. That would imply it was running Honeycomb (since it would not qualify for the Market if it ran a smartphone version of Android but lacked a cellular radio among other specs) though the dedicated buttons for back, menu and home would seem to contradict that.

Otherwise there's 8GB of internal storage plus a microSD card slot, a speaker and headphone jack, USB connectivity - presumably for charging and sideloading content - and support for ebooks using Adobe DRM, in ePub, PDF and Kobo's own formats. Whether Kobo can bring the price down to a Kindle Fire rivaling sub-$200 level by the time the Vox is actually ready for primetime remains to be seen.